The Fruitfulness of Normative Concepts

Thursday, 9 July 2026, 4pm to 5pm

About the talk
Can philosophical concepts do real work in improving our world? Should we, when evaluating competing understandings of concepts like ‘justice,’ ‘empowerment,’ and ‘solidarity,’ take into account whether these different understandings can actually help us to fight injustice, empower the oppressed, and promote solidarity between people? In The Fruitfulness of Normative Concepts, I make the first book-length attempt to argue that the answer to both of these questions is an emphatic “yes,” defending a tight relationship between philosophical theory and practice. The book advances the view that moral and political philosophers should be and often are interested in the “fruitfulness” of normative concepts – how well they help us to solve practical problems that we inevitably face as human beings interacting with one another. Philosophers must consult and sometimes conduct new empirical research to address questions of fruitfulness, in particular research in moral psychology. Hence, empirical research is not merely of side interest to moral and political philosophy but central to the philosophical enterprise of concept evaluation in these areas. In this talk, I will present the theory of normative fruitfulness developed in the book, discuss several case studies of empirical research that bears on dimensions of normative fruitfulness, and discuss prominent alternative ways of viewing the relationship between science and moral theory. I will also discuss how the approach taken in the book is compatible with traditional a priori theorizing in general, so long as such work makes room for empirical research to bear on fruitfulness considerations.
 
About the speaker
Dr. Lindauer is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Brooklyn College and the CUNY Graduate Center, and Associate Professor of Psychology at the CUNY Graduate Center, where he co-directs the PsyPhi Lab. His work sits at the intersection of moral and political philosophy and empirical moral psychology.

Department: The Uehiro Oxford Institute (Department)

Host: Philosophical Moral Psychology Lab